Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is Donald Trump really going to invade Greenland？

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Is Donald Trump really going to invade Greenland?

00:00:03.200 Well, here's a secret. America already did in 1940, and they never left. 0.85

00:00:07.760 I'll tell you a little bit about America's history with Greenland,

00:00:10.260 and if they're going to, quote, invade again.

00:00:12.720 I'll give you my thoughts on it based on reading the art of the deal.

00:00:17.540 But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.

00:00:20.260 That's the video version of this podcast.

00:00:22.580 Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.

00:00:25.520 It's eight bucks a month, and you get the video form of the podcast,

00:00:28.600 but you also get the satisfaction of keeping Rebel News strong,

00:00:32.440 because we don't take any money from the government, and it shows.

00:00:49.480 Tonight, is Donald Trump really going to invade Greenland?

00:00:55.600 It's January 7th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:58.600 Shame on you.

00:01:02.440 You censorious bug. 0.93

00:01:13.640 Oh, hi. I want to talk to you about Greenland,

00:01:15.480 but before, I've just got to tell you some breaking news.

00:01:17.900 Chrystia Freeland has announced that she will indeed be resigning

00:01:21.000 from the Canadian Parliament this Friday, January 9th,

00:01:24.620 instead of weeks into the future, which she said a few days ago.

00:01:28.040 The reason she's resigning is because almost the entire political spectrum, 1.00

00:01:32.660 other than the CBC, has criticized her for a conflict of interest.

00:01:36.260 Namely, while she is Mark Carney's envoy on Ukraine,

00:01:40.460 she accepted a job secretly from Vladimir Zelensky,

00:01:44.220 the president of Ukraine, to be his special envoy, too.

00:01:48.440 She got the offer on December 22nd.

00:01:50.600 She told Mark Carney about it on December 24th, which was fairly quick.

00:01:54.640 But on December 27th, they kept it a secret that she was hired by Ukraine

00:02:00.100 as they were involved with shipping another $2.5 billion

00:02:03.460 in foreign aid from Canada to Ukraine,

00:02:06.180 when Chrystia Freeland was on both sides of the deal. 0.86

00:02:10.160 She was Mark Carney's point person on Ukraine while working for Ukraine

00:02:14.360 and facilitating a $2.5 billion gift.

00:02:17.560 No wonder they kept it a secret.

00:02:19.680 We only heard about it when Vladimir Zelensky tweeted about it.

00:02:22.720 Just outrageous.

00:02:24.260 Conflict of interest. Corruption.

00:02:26.080 I'm glad she's gone. 0.92

00:02:27.080 Let her be corrupt in someone else's country. 1.00

00:02:28.960 So gross. 0.98

00:02:30.240 Anyways, I want to talk to you about Greenland.

00:02:32.300 And Donald Trump has wanted Greenland for a long time.

00:02:36.740 And it's not that crazy an idea.

00:02:39.040 I mean, think about it.

00:02:39.940 Have you heard of the Louisiana Purchase?

00:02:41.760 That's an American thing.

00:02:43.160 In 1803, a lot of land was bought from France.

00:02:48.420 Remember, this was the age of empires.

00:02:50.840 And more recently, remember, Russia used to own Alaska.

00:02:56.000 In fact, there's still some Russian-style churches up there in Alaska,

00:03:00.180 for those who went on the Rebel News cruise.

00:03:02.560 It was bought in 1867 from Russia.

00:03:06.240 And it was considered a foolish expenditure of money.

00:03:10.040 They called it, the Secretary of State at the time was William Seward.

00:03:13.180 They called it Seward's Folly to buy Alaska.

00:03:16.360 It was just for a number of millions of dollars,

00:03:18.340 which, of course, would be, you know, 10 or 20 times that today.

00:03:21.880 But what a bargain.

00:03:22.840 The trillions of dollars of mineral wealth there.

00:03:25.680 Plus, don't even get started on the military and strategic purpose there.

00:03:30.700 There were other purchases of land, too, from Mexico.

00:03:34.580 And did you know that the United States even bought the Philippines in the late 1800s?

00:03:43.260 For 20 million bucks, they just bought the Philippines from Spain.

00:03:47.760 Canada has done this, too.

00:03:49.780 A little bit different.

00:03:50.720 But Canada bought Rupert's Land, which was basically the vast expanse of the Northern Shield,

00:03:56.920 1.5 million square miles, bought for a song in 1869 from the Hudson's Bay Company that owned it.

00:04:04.520 Isn't that funny?

00:04:05.460 Canada bought the land from a company.

00:04:08.440 The U.S. even bought land from Denmark itself before.

00:04:11.380 Denmark controls and owns Greenland.

00:04:15.180 But the U.S. bought it.

00:04:16.140 I don't know if you know about those little Ireland's in the Caribbean.

00:04:18.440 Again, that's a place we went to on a Rebel cruise once.

00:04:20.980 The Virgin Islands in the Caribbean were Danish.

00:04:24.520 So the idea of buying territory or swapping territory is not unheard of.

00:04:29.740 It's not just discovering it or conquering it.

00:04:32.360 Countries buy and sell land.

00:04:34.400 Now, Rebel News sent reporters to Greenland in 2019 when Trump last mused about it.

00:04:41.520 I want to show you some of those videos.

00:04:43.580 They're sort of fun to watch.

00:04:45.400 It was very bleak out there.

00:04:47.220 It reminded me of when we sent a journalist up to Nunavut, Calhoun, I think it was.

00:04:54.560 Here is Jessica Sviatonevsky, our reporter at the time.

00:04:57.660 I guess it's seven years ago now.

00:05:00.140 In Greenland.

00:05:00.960 Take a look.

00:05:01.300 Would you ever want an American passport?

00:05:15.520 If I can use it all around the world, yes.

00:05:19.920 Would you ever want an American passport?

00:05:23.060 Yeah.

00:05:24.780 It would be easier to get around, right?

00:05:27.180 Yes.

00:05:27.680 Would you want one?

00:05:29.680 Yes.

00:05:30.520 I would.

00:05:30.580 Would you ever want an American passport?

00:05:49.560 No.

00:05:50.000 I guess I'm happy right here where I am, here in Greenland.

00:05:54.060 Do you want an American passport?

00:05:55.180 Oh, I don't know.

00:05:58.140 It's just many people think Trump is a person that does his way, like, unpredictable.

00:06:10.240 But he's not.

00:06:12.380 Would you want an American passport?

00:06:14.820 Yeah.

00:06:15.280 Do you want to make Greenland great again?

00:06:18.240 Yes.

00:06:19.040 Make Greenland great again.

00:06:21.400 Make Greenland great again.

00:06:23.980 Some people, you know, were warm to the idea.

00:06:26.700 Others weren't.

00:06:28.560 Seward himself looked into buying Greenland 150 years ago.

00:06:32.160 Nothing happened.

00:06:33.080 Would have been quite something for him to buy up more land.

00:06:35.280 In World War II, I mentioned that Denmark owns and controls Greenland.

00:06:40.540 In World War II, Denmark fell to the Nazis.

00:06:44.100 And I should say just, I should just tell you a neat little thing about Denmark.

00:06:48.120 They saved all their Jews.

00:06:50.720 There were a few thousand Jews in Denmark.

00:06:52.440 Not that many. 0.95

00:06:53.380 But it was so offensive to the Danes that the Nazis wanted to kill them.

00:06:57.460 They sneaked them across the water into Sweden and saved them.

00:07:01.520 It's a remarkable story.

00:07:03.700 But like I say, Denmark did fall to the Nazis.

00:07:06.460 So the U.S. stepped into Greenland because it was a Danish territory and they didn't want 0.72

00:07:11.540 to fall into the Nazis.

00:07:13.300 And it was an important base of operations, the North Atlantic, for the Allies.

00:07:18.260 After the Second World War, U.S. President Truman offered the Danes $100 million in gold

00:07:26.920 to buy Greenland.

00:07:29.060 Isn't that incredible?

00:07:30.040 How do we think gold?

00:07:31.460 That's just quite a touch, isn't it?

00:07:33.300 It was rejected.

00:07:35.480 But the U.S. had an enormous presence there during the Second World War.

00:07:40.280 And they've been there ever since.

00:07:42.180 In fact, it was an important station during the Cold War for all sorts of bombers.

00:07:47.220 It was called Thule Air Base.

00:07:49.100 Thule is how it's spelled, but I think it's pronounced Thule.

00:07:51.160 T-H-U-L-E Air Base.

00:07:53.420 Used to have 6,000 Americans stationed there during the Cold War.

00:07:56.960 Talk about putting the cold in the Cold War.

00:07:58.980 Now it's been renamed, I don't know if I'm pronouncing this right again, the Pitofix Space

00:08:04.520 Base, which sounds pretty cool, but it's really just a Thule Air Base again.

00:08:10.400 Just only 150 Americans now.

00:08:12.380 They call it Space Base, I think, because really that is where you're going to detect ICBMs,

00:08:18.280 intercontinental ballistic missiles, coming over from Russia.

00:08:21.780 If you look at the map, normally we look at the map where, you know, the equator is the

00:08:27.560 middle and things are distorted at the top and at the bottom, the two poles, because

00:08:31.420 normally we don't care about that when we're looking in the map.

00:08:34.240 If you look at a round globe from the top or look at this map here, you can see how incredibly

00:08:41.420 strategic Greenland is.

00:08:43.360 It is an enormous buffer of land between Russia and North America.

00:08:49.280 And in fact, where it's situated is nearer to where most of the Russian ICBM bases are.

00:08:56.520 So it's a very important place if your goal is to shoot down rockets.

00:09:02.680 And I don't know if you remember a few weeks ago, a few months ago now, Donald Trump talked

00:09:07.400 about the golden dome instead of the iron dome that Israel has.

00:09:13.060 He talked about an anti-missile system that Trump wanted to design to knock down missiles.

00:09:18.360 I think that's one of the reasons why Trump is so focused on Greenland and why it's called

00:09:23.080 the Space Base.

00:09:23.840 I think Trump wants to build a whole battery of anti-nuclear missile, anti-missiles on Greenland.

00:09:32.620 And if you look at the map, there's no other place to put it.

00:09:35.100 It is a largely uninhabited place.

00:09:37.660 It was run by America, saved by America during the Second World War.

00:09:41.400 You had an enormous population of American soldiers there throughout the Cold War.

00:09:45.720 America's made an offer on it before.

00:09:47.340 I think Trump really believes in it.

00:09:49.840 Now, there has not been an outright threat by Trump to seize the country.

00:09:58.360 It's not a country.

00:09:59.240 Just seize the territory.

00:10:00.980 But there has been a careful ambiguity in the language.

00:10:05.600 Carolyn Leavitt, the Trump spokesman, Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff.

00:10:10.300 They both said things that didn't say Trump would invade Greenland, but didn't say he wouldn't either.

00:10:19.120 They had sort of a strategic ambiguity.

00:10:21.360 Here, take a look at how that sounded.

00:10:22.760 Can you rule out that the U.S. is ever going to try to take Greenland by force?

00:10:27.900 Well, let me let me go back a step.

00:10:32.200 The president has been clear for months now.

00:10:34.340 So I know you're treating this as breaking news.

00:10:36.420 The president has been clear for months now that the United States should be the nation that has Greenland as part of our overall security apparatus.

00:10:47.880 The United States.

00:10:48.280 But your wife posted that like hours after the Venezuela operation.

00:10:52.180 But that's that's why it's newly relevant.

00:10:54.340 No, I'm not.

00:10:54.840 And I'll talk with you about it for an hour.

00:10:56.600 I think it's really important conversation.

00:10:57.860 I just want to I just wanted to reset, Jake, by making clear that it has been the formal position of the U.S. government since the beginning of this administration.

00:11:06.700 Frankly, going back to the previous Trump administration, that Greenland should be part of the United States.

00:11:12.420 The president has been very clear about that.

00:11:14.360 That is the formal position of the U.S. government.

00:11:16.800 Right. But can you say that military action against Greenland is off the table?

00:11:20.640 You want to be military action against Greenland.

00:11:22.780 The the Greenland has a population of 30,000 people, Jake.

00:11:27.140 The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland?

00:11:31.580 What is the basis of their territorial claim?

00:11:34.060 What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark?

00:11:37.380 The United States is the power of NATO.

00:11:40.620 For the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States.

00:11:50.060 And so that's a conversation that we're going to have as a country.

00:11:52.920 That's a process we're going to have as a as a community of nations.

00:11:56.360 So you can't take it off the table that the U.S. would use military force to seize Greenland.

00:12:00.880 I understand, Jake, I understand you're trying very hard to which which, again, is your job.

00:12:07.140 I respect it. It's great to get exactly the headline right.

00:12:10.580 That catchy headline trying to get an answer that says that says Miller refuses to rule out the.

00:12:16.920 The United States should have Greenland as part of the United States.

00:12:21.660 There's no need to even think or talk about this in the context that you're asking of a military operation.

00:12:27.800 Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily.

00:12:31.120 That's really that's audacious, which is, of course, Trump's middle name.

00:12:36.580 And it has offended NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

00:12:40.780 Remember what NATO is about.

00:12:42.200 It's it's all for one and one for all.

00:12:44.440 Article five of NATO says if any country is attacked, it's like all countries are attacked.

00:12:49.080 And what happens if the United States takes territory from another NATO country, namely Greenland, which belongs to Denmark?

00:12:58.140 It's it's quite incredible.

00:13:00.800 And I think it is a real challenge to NATO and a variety of NATO countries put out a statement.

00:13:06.920 Very interesting.

00:13:08.760 They said they take Trump seriously on defense, but they won't accept the violation of sovereignty.

00:13:15.320 Some say it would be the end of NATO if Trump took Greenland.

00:13:20.240 And I got to tell you, it would be hard to imagine otherwise.

00:13:22.960 I mean, how could Denmark itself remain in?

00:13:26.560 And if Denmark left, probably other countries, too, would leave.

00:13:30.180 But I have a theory on this.

00:13:32.540 And it's because I've read the book The Art of the Deal.

00:13:35.240 That was Trump's semi-autobiographical book about how he does business.

00:13:39.420 And it's a very interesting book.

00:13:40.880 It's worth reading for its own sake.

00:13:43.040 But I think it really I mean, Trump, I think, is quite candid in that book.

00:13:47.100 And one of the things he talks about is that he, in negotiations, takes an outrageous position that he knows is outrageous to redefine where a normal outcome would be.

00:13:59.480 So if the answer is, can we have it?

00:14:02.440 No, you can't.

00:14:03.660 Can we buy it?

00:14:04.700 No, you can't.

00:14:05.340 That's a normal conversation.

00:14:07.060 But if it's I'm going to take it and you just saw me take out Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela.

00:14:14.180 So like if you say something so outrageous, we're going to invade and we're going to just take it.

00:14:19.340 And what are you going to do?

00:14:20.820 You can then abandon that position.

00:14:22.820 And now a more moderate position is, OK, well, you'll just sign a 100 year lease and we have access to it.

00:14:31.020 I don't know what the what the normal outcome would be after that audacious start.

00:14:36.140 So that's Trump's art of the deal.

00:14:37.800 He says he does that.

00:14:39.640 Could that be what's going on here?

00:14:41.020 I think so.

00:14:42.400 The U.S., like I say, has a base there and really could do what it wants.

00:14:48.620 Denmark is a pretty small country with a pretty small military.

00:14:53.120 And I really don't think that they would be able to stop America in any way, but neither can they do what America wants to be done, which is have a serious military up there, not just to stop Russian ICBMs, but there's Russian ships and Chinese ships. 0.57

00:15:08.820 Everyone's poking around up there.

00:15:12.000 I think some of this is Trump wanting to make history also, whether it was Panama on the Panama Canal or reshaping Latin America with the Monroe Doctrine that he's now calling the Don Road Doctrine.

00:15:23.680 I think Donald Trump is in a very unusual place for a president because he was shot at, hit but not killed, because the Democrats did all the lawfare on him, trying to put him in jail and because he won in a miraculous way.

00:15:36.700 I think he really thinks that it's a historic presidency and he measures every day by the minute.

00:15:44.920 And I think he's trying to do so many things.

00:15:46.620 And I think he is looking for a legacy.

00:15:48.540 People point out that he, you know, values a state dinner with the King of England and he values being nominated for the Nobel Prize.

00:15:56.400 I think he does.

00:15:57.420 I think he wants to go down as a historic president.

00:15:59.740 And just like buying Alaska was historic and the Louisiana Purchase and all these things are taught in history books.

00:16:08.540 And Seward's Folly is now Seward's Genius.

00:16:11.340 I think Trump wants to do that.

00:16:13.240 I think he wants to make some history.

00:16:15.020 I think a lot of it is very genuine.

00:16:16.520 And there's no way that Denmark can do the proper job.

00:16:19.520 And so I looked it up.

00:16:20.760 Denmark's military budget is about $10 billion a year U.S.

00:16:25.140 I think that's like, what, 1% of the U.S. military budget?

00:16:30.700 There's just no way that Denmark can lift the load.

00:16:35.900 Trump made a joke about the Danish increase in military spending in Greenland that they added one dog sled here.

00:16:42.520 Take a look at this.

00:16:43.320 He said this on Air Force One the other day.

00:16:44.860 I will say this about Greenland.

00:16:46.640 We need Greenland from a national security situation. 0.50

00:16:51.600 It's so strategic.

00:16:52.660 Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.

00:16:58.780 We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.

00:17:03.140 And Denmark is not going to be able to do it, I can tell you.

00:17:06.700 You know what Denmark did recently to boost up security in Greenland?

00:17:11.820 They added one more dog sled.

00:17:14.740 It's true.

00:17:15.880 By the way, being on dog sleds is a legitimate way to patrol Greenland itself.

00:17:21.460 We have, we call them rangers in Canada, and they are on sleds also.

00:17:25.400 But it's not enough.

00:17:26.500 I think that was Trump's point is, yeah, it's good to have the patrols on the snow on the dog sled.

00:17:31.480 That's a good way to do it.

00:17:32.780 But we're in the age of missiles and anti-missiles.

00:17:35.020 And it's just not enough to have that old-fashioned approach.

00:17:38.680 Isn't it a fact that Trump is showing that Europe, at the end of the day, is a lot of talk, but can't actually do anything major, strategic, historic?

00:17:54.680 Isn't he proving that?

00:17:55.740 Not on Russia, for example.

00:17:58.260 Mark Carney flew to Paris to go to what was called the Coalition of the Willing.

00:18:03.060 These are people willing to put in money to help rebuild Ukraine.

00:18:05.900 And all these European leaders were there.

00:18:08.140 And there was a couple of Americans there, too, Jared Kushner and Trump's negotiator.

00:18:12.320 But none of it makes sense without American money and American military might.

00:18:18.420 So you have all these, it's like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

00:18:21.240 You have all these little countries putting out press releases and going to these fancy meetings.

00:18:26.320 But it really is America in or not.

00:18:29.360 That's how this whole thing turns.

00:18:30.980 On Russia, on the Middle East, you know, Ireland and Canada and Spain put out statements saying they recognize a Palestinian state.

00:18:41.720 OK, so your virtue signaling to your Islamist immigration, got it. 0.95

00:18:46.260 But no one cares.

00:18:48.300 No one in the region cares other than Hamas, which put out a thank you letter. 0.95

00:18:51.720 Israel doesn't care what Canada has to say or what Ireland has to say. 0.56

00:18:55.240 No disrespect to either country.

00:18:56.660 But as they say, you and what army?

00:19:00.980 Canada, Spain, Norway, Ireland, the countries that had so much to say about the Middle East, none of them were involved in getting the ceasefire done, getting the hostages back or anything.

00:19:11.000 It's just America. 0.53

00:19:12.920 We really are in a unipolar world.

00:19:15.260 Now, Russia and China would say, no, no, we're serious superpowers, too.

00:19:19.620 Yeah, maybe.

00:19:20.700 But we saw how Chinese and Russian air defense worked in Karakas the other day.

00:19:25.040 It didn't.

00:19:26.880 Boy, they don't do a lot, but they sure talk a lot.

00:19:30.060 Mark Carney in particular loves that system of international relations, meetings and the rules-based international order.

00:19:38.680 He loves flying around.

00:19:40.640 But I think that Trump has just decided.

00:19:44.180 And I think the reaction to his raid in Karakas and the fact that he pulled off such a military feat, I think he's just decided he wants to be the boss.

00:19:52.160 Not Ursula van der Leyen.

00:19:54.640 Yeah, I don't know who that is either.

00:19:55.940 Some European Union.

00:19:57.360 But not some, you know, weak, powerless, impotent, but noisy European politician.

00:20:04.080 And I don't know if you saw this, this morning, the United States military raided and seized two tankers that were involved in selling Iranian and Venezuelan oil contrary to sanctions.

00:20:19.740 Now, the Russians didn't like this, so they renamed one of the oil tankers, gave it a Russian name, and put it under a Russian flag.

00:20:27.960 And they said they were dispatching a Russian submarine to protect him.

00:20:32.980 Americans didn't care. 0.97

00:20:34.060 Trump didn't care.

00:20:34.780 He still raided and seized both tankers anyway.

00:20:37.400 And, you know, he was basically, you know, the nose in his bones that he has the strongest military in the world.

00:20:44.200 And Russia is not going to start a war with America over some tanker shipping sanctioned oil.

00:20:51.320 I think Trump is discovering how powerful the U.S. military is, and he can do what he wants with it.

00:20:58.400 And who's going to stop him?

00:21:00.180 You and what army?

00:21:01.460 I think that that's unsettling to the littler powers like Denmark, even like Canada and the United Kingdom, because we always thought we were, you know, America was Batman and we're Robin. 0.92

00:21:15.800 We may be the junior partner, but we're best friends.

00:21:18.340 I like that line that Wab Kanu once said, we're not going to be your 51st state, but we'll be your number one friend.

00:21:23.740 I thought that was a really sweet line.

00:21:25.620 But Canada, you know, there are some people who, for opportunistic reasons, want to whip up Canadian fear of being militarily invaded.

00:21:36.500 I don't think that's going to happen, but it'll sell some Toronto stars and it'll worry enough boomers that I think Mark Carney will go up in the polls, at least in Ontario.

00:21:44.680 But I try and think about how Canada can deal with Trump.

00:21:47.860 And you've heard me say this before.

00:21:49.700 We're not going to beat Trump on a one-on-one economic negotiation.

00:21:53.100 How could we possibly?

00:21:53.960 They outgun us more than ten to one.

00:21:56.520 They could take our steel industry and our auto industry if they wanted to, and it looks like Trump wants to.

00:22:01.780 You can't beat him on a head-on battle.

00:22:06.660 But what if Canada were to try something, I'm calling it asymmetrical?

00:22:11.540 And hear me out, and you're not going to like this, but what if Canada said to Donald Trump, look, we're not going to be a 51st state.

00:22:19.000 You already have access to our oil sands through our Canada-US free trade agreement, so you have full access there.

00:22:25.680 You have preferential access, in fact.

00:22:27.620 But what if Canada offered Donald Trump a joint base in our north, in our Arctic, up in Inovic, or even further north?

00:22:37.740 That's an asymmetrical arrangement that might help us with trade, and if it was a joint base for both American and Canadian soldiers to train together, to work together.

00:22:49.160 A recognition that we don't have the budget, the technology, the equipment on our own, but we can work with the Americans as we've worked with them for the better part of a century.

00:22:58.440 And before you say, oh, that's a violation of our sovereignty, American military train in Canada, or at least they used to, for example, during Operation Maple Flag.

00:23:07.380 That was the exercise of sort of the top gun for NATO countries before we had to shut it down in Alberta because we didn't have planes that worked anymore.

00:23:16.920 Canada-US through NORAD both defend the north together.

00:23:20.180 As I mentioned the other day, it was American jets that scrambled when there was a problem over a B.C. airport with an unidentified plane.

00:23:30.080 The Americans are protecting us right now by having a northern base, a joint base, Canadian forces base, and a U.S. base.

00:23:38.040 Call it a space base.

00:23:39.620 I think he could give Trump that feeling he wants of expanding and domination.

00:23:44.600 Give him that feeling, and it'll be true, by the way, to have an American base up there.

00:23:49.780 Give him something that's asymmetrical, that's different than a concession on trade.

00:23:55.160 And, by the way, keep us all safer, too.

00:23:57.680 What do you think of that?

00:23:58.920 And before you say, oh, that's selling out our sovereignty, remember that there are U.S. military bases in the United Kingdom, in Italy, in Turkey, in countries all around the world.

00:24:09.940 It's not a sign of enmity.

00:24:13.480 It's sort of the opposite.

00:24:14.400 It's a sign of friendship.

00:24:15.860 And that's a qualitative thing that I think America doesn't get from Canada right now.

00:24:20.120 They just get, you know, passive-aggressive jabs.

00:24:24.540 Anyways, is Donald Trump going to militarily invade Greenland?

00:24:28.380 Well, the answer is that already happened in 1940 when America saved Greenland from the Nazis.

00:24:34.780 Americans just never left. 0.75

00:24:35.940 We'll see what happens, but it is sort of fun to watch those European politicians panic, isn't it?

00:24:41.740 Stay with us for more.

00:24:51.720 Well, there's a saying attributed to the Jesuits,

00:24:54.740 give me a child until he is seven and I'll give you the man.

00:24:57.640 As in those early formative years of our lives, so much of our mind is shaped.

00:25:03.360 And that's why teachers are in such an important position of trust.

00:25:07.320 And these days, you often have both mom and dad working.

00:25:10.660 So really, who's looking after the child and who has time to look over homework?

00:25:15.420 The teachers' unions are amongst the most radical places around.

00:25:19.420 And I have in front of me a story published in True North by our friend Melanie Bennett.

00:25:24.040 The headline is, Ontario School Board embeds Islamophobia lessons while neglecting anti-Semitism.

00:25:33.440 Freedom of information documents reveal a stark double standard inside the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board

00:25:39.340 where Islamophobia is woven deeply into the curriculum.

00:25:43.080 And joining us now to talk about this very interesting investigation is Melanie Bennett.

00:25:48.380 Melanie, nice to see you again.

00:25:50.540 Hi, thanks for having me on again.

00:25:51.900 You know, there's so much in this and I want to recommend all our viewers check it out.

00:25:55.600 It's on the Juno News website.

00:25:57.720 You work for True North.

00:25:58.960 The first thing I saw on the very first page of your story was sort of the motto of this learning goals.

00:26:08.680 And you tell me if this is the motto of the whole school board.

00:26:12.320 But it's three words.

00:26:13.660 Learn, disrupt, build.

00:26:17.180 And I understand learn and I understand build.

00:26:20.460 But I'm thinking disrupt.

00:26:21.900 You're teaching children.

00:26:24.000 But that's just a tip of the hat to the fact that teachers unions really are radical Marxist organizations designed not only to enrich their members, which we can understand,

00:26:33.920 but to proselytize to other people's kids, to disrupt what parents might think, to disrupt what the community might think.

00:26:43.700 I think one of the most radical things in your entire story is that three-word motto.

00:26:48.040 Yeah, the learn, disrupt, rebuild is essentially, this is unique to the Hamilton-Wentwood District School Board,

00:26:57.020 but it's essentially a set of teacher training resources.

00:27:02.380 And when I say a set, I mean a very broad set.

00:27:04.900 It contains hundreds and hundreds of teacher resource materials to embed social justice education within classes like art, literacy, geography, history, you name it.

00:27:19.500 It's how to embed, you know, this intersectional social justice within the education system.

00:27:23.960 And it's, I haven't seen this particular approach at other school boards.

00:27:28.060 So this is very Hamilton-Wentwood District School Board orientated.

00:27:30.940 And the interesting thing about Learn, Disrupt, Rebuild is it's been going on for several years,

00:27:37.920 but in the last few years, they added on to it and they added this Islamophobia training.

00:27:44.320 And it goes pretty much from primary to, I haven't seen any secondary, but certainly primary level, elementary level.

00:27:53.460 And yeah, it's essentially treating religion as race.

00:28:00.940 Yeah, I mean, it's really incredible.

00:28:03.740 Canada has had an anti-Semitic crime wave for the last two years.

00:28:07.560 And I mean actual crimes, trespass, mischief, uttering threats, vandalism.

00:28:12.000 And we see it every weekend when pro-Hamas mobs, almost always foreign, foreign-directed, scream at Jews in my own neighborhood, in Toronto.

00:28:22.200 And, but what the schools are teaching is not anti-Semitism, but Islamophobia, when in fact, it's overwhelming the amount of anti-Semitism.

00:28:32.320 But the focus in the schools is Islamophobia.

00:28:35.640 And they have all sorts of lesson plans.

00:28:37.500 I'm just going to read one from page six of your story.

00:28:40.180 At least that's the page count when I print it out.

00:28:42.380 This is, this is one of the projects.

00:28:44.340 This is one of the thought experiments the kids have.

00:28:47.120 A group of kids see Wahaj's grandmother bring him his lunch.

00:28:52.480 They tease her and call her ninja lady because she wears a burqa, a veil that covers her face.

00:28:59.300 Well, if you're a kid, a Canadian kid from almost any background, and you see someone covered head to toe, I'm talking full, not just a head wrap like a hijab, but the actual face obscuring black cloth, that is not normal.

00:29:17.600 That's not normal in most parts of the world.

00:29:20.140 In fact, it's banned in many Muslim countries.

00:29:22.460 And I, I'm not surprised that a kid would say that looks like a ninja, not even in a hateful way.

00:29:29.660 Just, this is such an astonishing sight to seem, but that is taught as Islamophobia.

00:29:35.340 You cannot have a reaction to someone dressed, by the way, not even a second's thought to how women are treated and what it means that a woman cannot feel sunlight on her face.

00:29:46.860 And a woman has to be, you know, living in, in such a subordinate condition. 1.00

00:29:50.940 And that's just one of a hundred examples in your story of what is being taught to children of tender years.

00:29:57.380 Yeah, it seems to be a normalization of the introduction of religion into the education system, which is actually supposed to be secular.

00:30:06.140 And even though the learn, disrupt, rebuild, teach resource package has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lessons.

00:30:12.980 As far as I can tell, Islam is the only one treated in this particular intersectional social justice way.

00:30:19.240 Like, you don't see this for Judaism.

00:30:21.940 You don't see it for Christianity. 0.98

00:30:23.520 You don't see it for Hinduism or anything else.

00:30:25.900 Although there's a slight mention of those within the Islamophobia documents, I guess, comparing them.

00:30:30.800 But they're really treating religion as a racial category to kind of fit it into the diversity, equity and inclusion, which is how education is sort of being transformed.

00:30:41.280 Right.

00:30:41.660 So I have some concerns about that, about some of the aspects of religion being normalized within education when Canada has typically been a Christian country.

00:30:52.540 And those are being downplayed all the time.

00:30:54.940 I have so many stories, even just this Christmas, about how you can't talk about Christmas.

00:30:59.560 We have winter concerts.

00:31:01.180 You know, we're downplaying Christmas and elevating other religions. 0.98

00:31:04.660 And Islam seems to be the one that's taking the lead in this. 1.00

00:31:08.680 Yeah.

00:31:08.980 Yeah.

00:31:09.320 I just want to give one more example from that same sort of lesson set that you show there.

00:31:14.920 Fatima's friend tells her that she looks prettier when she does not wear a hijab. 0.96

00:31:22.540 Now, that's an opinion.

00:31:24.720 And it may be true.

00:31:25.980 And the thing about opinions is they're not really true or false.

00:31:28.360 They're honest or not.

00:31:30.120 They're reasonable or not.

00:31:31.680 If someone is wearing a hijab and it obscures how they look, I mean, it obscures hair. 1.00

00:31:36.620 And hair is a source of beauty in the Western tradition.

00:31:41.420 And the official answer to that is Islamophobia.

00:31:45.080 By treating Fatima's decision to wear a hijab of fashion, her friend is not respecting Fatima's beliefs.

00:31:51.900 Of course, I'm old enough to remember the case of Aksa Parvez, a Pakistani teenage girl who didn't want to wear her hijab.

00:32:00.360 And so she was murdered by her father and her brother in a shocking case of an honor killing.

00:32:06.400 So, you know, it may be Fatima's decision as a child to wear hijab or it may be the kind of pressure that Aksa Parvez faced.

00:32:14.540 But either way, someone is allowed to have an opinion that people look better without hijabs on. 1.00

00:32:19.660 This is such brainwashing.

00:32:22.400 And I absolutely see it being forced by these.

00:32:26.960 And when I say communist teachers unions, they are communist.

00:32:31.140 They may be race Marxists and gender Marxists and trans Marxists, but it's a form of Marxism.

00:32:38.100 Yeah, that's that's kind of the issue.

00:32:40.020 And I would agree with you.

00:32:40.700 I think there's a lot of extremism within the education system.

00:32:44.140 A lot of it certainly is coming from from the unions, from what I can tell.

00:32:47.640 But we're not the issue with turning this into DEI, a race category and all this stuff, is that we're going to struggle to be able to criticize this and keep the education system secular.

00:32:57.460 And there are issues with within Islam, some fundamentalism, extremist issues.

00:33:02.260 And they tend to be overlooked.

00:33:04.640 They tend to be ignored or whitewashed.

00:33:07.340 Another story that I had not too long ago was how the Ontario curriculum in world religions includes a teacher prompt about jihad being a personal struggle and a misunderstood concept.

00:33:20.760 But never, ever discussing any of the fundamentalist or extremist outcomes of some of that, you know, terrorist attacks.

00:33:27.800 So it feels like there's a whitewashing here by implementing it within diversity, equity and inclusion pipelines.

00:33:34.520 And that does I worry about that because any sniff of anything fundamentalist from other religion, particularly Christian religion, is definitely pounced upon by the very same unions that you were discussing now.

00:33:48.240 Now, who's in charge of this?

00:33:50.180 I can imagine that there's the school board, but above the school board is the provincial minister of education.

00:33:57.860 And has there been any indication that, I mean, we have an allegedly conservative government in Ontario, but I don't think they are.

00:34:05.660 I can't think of any measurement by which you could call them conservative.

00:34:11.720 They don't even affiliate with their federal conservative cousins.

00:34:14.860 Doug Ford spent the election undermining Pierre Paulyev, praising Mark Carney as his best friend.

00:34:20.900 It's sort of gross.

00:34:21.960 Has there been any reaction to this or other examples like this by the so-called conservative?

00:34:29.680 I'm not seeing that.

00:34:30.400 Yeah.

00:34:30.640 Go ahead.

00:34:32.100 I know.

00:34:32.880 So Paul Calandra is our education minister right now.

00:34:36.020 And although he does talk tough about indoctrination, he will touch the issue at times, but he doesn't really give very clear answers.

00:34:44.120 Now, a lot of the driving factor behind this is in the Ministry of Education.

00:34:47.220 We have an education equity secretariat, which can be responsible for certain things.

00:34:52.240 In this case, this is a board-driven initiative.

00:34:55.980 So it was a program, Learn Disruptory Build, is a program that was paid for by a consultant.

00:35:01.060 It was a package delivered to this board.

00:35:02.620 They were in charge of this.

00:35:03.760 It doesn't come from the ministry.

00:35:04.540 But I'm not seeing any signal from the minister of education to actually tackle the ideological elements within education.

00:35:14.560 So I would like to.

00:35:16.460 Whenever I write a story, I constantly am asking the ministry of education what their views are, if they support these sorts of things.

00:35:22.300 And I would love to get some answers from them on that, actually.

00:35:25.060 Now, across Canada, there are Catholic school boards that presumably, or perhaps historically, taught a Catholic point of view.

00:35:35.960 And this was an interesting constitutional concession when you had two founding nations.

00:35:42.520 You know, Catholic education was hardwired into Canada's historical constitution going back 250 years.

00:35:49.540 Are the so-called Catholic school boards in Ontario, are they going down this Islamist path, too? 0.74

00:35:58.240 Is this same kind of learn, disrupt, rebuild ideology infecting what should be Catholic schools?

00:36:06.720 So I actually, the reason I've got these documents is because this year I started putting an awful lot of access to information requests to a whole bunch of school boards, both Catholic and public, to try to find out what their diversity, equity, and inclusion training was.

00:36:19.540 And I have seen a little bit from the Catholic board.

00:36:23.920 I think it was actually the Halton Catholic board.

00:36:26.480 And I don't remember any Islamophobia documents in there.

00:36:29.780 So I can't really say on that behalf.

00:36:31.740 What I can say is that the Catholic boards do seem to be doing similar ideological training in other areas.

00:36:37.180 And that could be, you know, gender ideology, could also be decolonial stuff.

00:36:40.900 So they are engaging in that because, again, I'll just point out that the Ministry of Education's equity secretariat does demand this.

00:36:50.520 The education system is aligning itself more and more with social justice education rather than necessarily knowledge building education.

00:36:56.820 You know, the ABCs, one, two, threes.

00:36:58.400 So you will see it.

00:37:01.240 And as soon as I know more information on that, I will be publishing everything that I find out.

00:37:05.760 And that includes the Catholic boards.

00:37:07.220 But in terms of Islam and Islamophobia, I can't think of anything off the top of my head that's of any particular concern with the Catholic boards.

00:37:14.300 The fact that you say a so-called conservative government has an equity secretariat right there.

00:37:20.400 I mean, all sorts of alarm bells should be going off.

00:37:23.520 You know, I remember a few years ago, there was a schoolgirl who wore a hijab who had a press conference and all the national media were in attendance.

00:37:31.700 And she said she was walking to school and a man accosted her with scissors, she said, and cut her hijab.

00:37:41.180 It was such a preposterous story.

00:37:43.100 And I remember she said it was an Asian man.

00:37:47.160 And I thought, did an Asian man just happen to have scissors on him and go up to a girl walking to the school in the morning with a hijab and carefully cut the hijab in a way that didn't poke or injure the girl?

00:38:04.480 And I thought that is BS.

00:38:06.540 And I thought to myself, I bet she was coached to say a Caucasian male, but that's sort of a grown up word.

00:38:13.920 And so she was a young girl and she said an Asian male.

00:38:17.180 But that was just one of a hundred things that were so weird about this story.

00:38:20.660 But it was like a national story.

00:38:23.580 Trudeau himself tweeted about it.

00:38:25.720 But within days, it just sort of melted away.

00:38:29.080 And the police, they didn't come out and call it a hoax.

00:38:31.540 They said, we now have information that leads us to drop the investment.

00:38:35.980 Like it was a lie.

00:38:37.780 It was a Jussie Smollett hoax.

00:38:40.240 And it's because this supply and demand, there is such a demand for proof of Islamophobia, but there's no supply.

00:38:49.060 You know, despite everything, Canada has accepted the mass immigration of Muslim people, including some who dress up like, yes, like ninjas. 1.00

00:38:58.820 And there just isn't the hate crime wave.

00:39:01.580 Canadians are not easily riled like that. 0.97

00:39:04.640 And so you saw this liar and her wicked family concocting a hoax to smear, in that case, the Asian community. 0.94

00:39:13.300 I should tell you, Melanie, that that tweet from Justin Trudeau remains up to this day, that he has not taken down the lies. 0.82

00:39:21.500 So, frankly, mission accomplished.

00:39:23.680 That's how this whole thing feels to me, is that there isn't a wave of anti-Islamic Islamophobia or discrimination in Canada.

00:39:31.620 There just isn't, especially proportionately.

00:39:34.020 But this is designed to just see Smollett it, to hope this whole thing is a hoax.

00:39:39.660 Yeah, I can add to that, actually, which is like it's not really to do with the low disruptory bill.

00:39:43.920 But the National Council for Canadian Muslims is very involved in developing Islamophobia, anti-Islamophobia strategies and action plans for numerous school boards in Ontario and also recently Manitoba.

00:39:58.740 And at the Durham District School Board recently, they just released another one.

00:40:05.880 And within it, they have a dedicated, I guess you could call it like a snitch line.

00:40:10.660 So, it's training on how to perceive things as Islamophobia and then teaching kids how then to report this with the NCCM.

00:40:19.220 So, it does feel like there's not enough supply.

00:40:25.180 And so, you need to find more complaints, right?

00:40:27.520 So, we need to up the amount of complaints because when you compare it to the number of incidents against Jews in this country since the October 7th Hamas attacks, they're massive.

00:40:38.120 And, you know, I can't help but think if that's a reason why they need snitch lines in these anti-Islamophobia strategies.

00:40:43.760 Yeah, you know what, I occasionally check out a Canadian government website that lets you search grants by any keyword, including the, I think you mentioned the NCCM, the National Council of Canadian Muslims, which is a Muslim Brotherhood front group.

00:40:58.840 And they receive tens of millions of dollars, cumulatively, to generate this stuff, to generate these curriculums and inject them straight into the school boards.

00:41:10.860 By the way, so do the trans movement and so does various, pretty much if there's an activist group out there, you can bet they're getting grants from the federal government to create this fake reality that we're living in some horrific war of all against all. 0.73

00:41:28.440 Well, Canada's a pretty good place.

00:41:29.760 I think we've had some real problems over the last two years.

00:41:32.180 We've turned a blind eye to professional agitators, but it's, there's not an anti-trans crime wave.

00:41:39.880 There's not an anti-Muslim crime wave in Canada, despite the government attempts to fake one.

00:41:46.860 Is there any, is there any end to this?

00:41:49.540 I mean, I can imagine once this stuff is in the curriculum, you'd have to dynamite it to get it out.

00:41:55.740 Yeah, that's a really difficult question because these things are not only embedded, but they're increasingly so.

00:42:02.120 It's becoming a larger and larger priority to transform education for social justice.

00:42:07.140 And this involves the Ontario Human Rights Commission, obviously the Ministry of Education, the teachers unions, the teachers colleges, as in the universities, the Ontario College of Teachers, which regulates teachers.

00:42:17.700 So there are many, and also the activists involved with education.

00:42:21.780 You mentioned NCCM receiving money.

00:42:23.360 I did a calculation of grants and lobbying databases, and I calculated that NCCM received over $750,000 from the Ministry of Education here in Ontario to develop these anti-Islamophobia strategies.

00:42:36.860 So, and this is since 2018, the calculation.

00:42:40.620 So, you know, there is a lot of interest in maintaining the social justice element of education.

00:42:47.720 So it's going to be very, very difficult to get it out.

00:42:49.560 And I think that would require a lot of repealing of a lot of these things.

00:42:53.580 And I certainly would like to see it.

00:42:55.340 I would like to see it start with the Ministry of Education, with Paul Calandra, possibly even talking about getting rid of the Education Equity Secretariat, which actually has only been in place since 2017.

00:43:06.180 It's brand new, and most people don't even know about it.

00:43:09.400 You know what?

00:43:10.660 The only thing I can say about Doug Ford is that the two alternative parties in Ontario are probably worse.

00:43:16.680 That's how bad it is.

00:43:17.940 I'm really glad for your story, and it can be read.

00:43:21.600 It was published just a couple of days on JunoNews.com.

00:43:24.720 Melanie Bennett, great to see you again.

00:43:26.520 Please come back on when you have another scoop like this one.

00:43:30.380 Thank you.

00:43:30.900 Thank you.

00:43:31.560 All right.

00:43:31.940 There she is, Melanie Bennett, writing for True North in Juno News.

00:43:35.620 Stay with us.

00:43:36.680 Your Letters to Me next.

00:43:46.360 Hey, welcome back.

00:43:47.340 Your Letters to Me.

00:43:49.240 Danamac says Vladimir put out that statement so that Freeland couldn't pocket the funds herself.

00:43:54.880 Oh, I think you were very wrong on that.

00:43:57.040 I think that Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. 0.79

00:44:00.100 Well, so is Russia, by the way. 0.51

00:44:01.300 But you pour $100 billion in to a country like that, so there's so much money sloshing around.

00:44:08.320 Everyone there is on the take.

00:44:09.900 I mean, not everyone, but it is just shocking.

00:44:12.360 I have no evidence that Chrystia Freeland has some sort of commission or back-channel pay, but it would not surprise me one bit.

00:44:20.920 Mark Warren Chuck says, is the World Economic Forum still a conspiracy?

00:44:24.760 Well, it is a conspiracy in terms of people conspiring together.

00:44:29.980 And Mark Carney is going this year.

00:44:31.640 I think Chrystia Freeland will be back.

00:44:34.280 Believe it or not, Donald Trump is speaking this year.

00:44:36.340 He's spoken there before, and he typically goes there to sort of lay down the law.

00:44:39.880 And the funny thing is the World Economic Forum welcomes Donald Trump because they're not just ideologues.

00:44:46.760 They're investors, too.

00:44:48.080 I don't know if you saw this, but in the last 24 hours, Donald Trump made a startling announcement.

00:44:53.480 He's banning large corporations from buying up homes.

00:44:57.660 I don't know if you know this, but there are some huge companies, including BlackRock,

00:45:01.280 that buy up thousands and thousands and thousands of American homes and then rent them out.

00:45:08.440 And they just inject so much capital into the U.S. real estate market that it raises prices and it distorts the market.

00:45:16.220 And you could say, well, that's capitalism.

00:45:18.080 Well, today Donald Trump said that's not allowed anymore.

00:45:20.540 In fact, I saw the stock price of some of these mega companies plummet today because their whole business model is Donald Trump says he's going to block it.

00:45:28.800 So my point is saying that is that Donald Trump is going to Davos, and they care about ideology, but they also care about getting rich over there.

00:45:35.720 Larry Fink is really one of the bosses.

00:45:38.480 Larry Fink is the head of BlackRock.

00:45:39.880 He's one of the bosses of the World Economic Forum.

00:45:42.620 So they hate Trump ideologically, but they want to get rich, and America is the place to do it.

00:45:48.140 They're obsessed with tech and AI, and that's an American thing.

00:45:51.960 So I don't know.

00:45:52.720 We'll see how it goes.

00:45:53.540 But I think Trump is going to be fairly well received there.

00:45:57.060 Not ideologically, but everyone wants some of that American money.

00:46:00.080 Another letter from Annette Gignac, who says, we never did find out where our $400 million went with the SDTC scandal.

00:46:11.000 You know, I got to tell you, I don't know where the SDTC scandal is without looking it up.

00:46:15.540 I just read your letters live, and I respond to them.

00:46:18.180 But a $400 million scandal in Canada these days is almost a small scandal.

00:46:25.040 I mean, the amount of money that Ontario and federal governments gave to different electric vehicle battery companies is literally 100 times that amount.

00:46:35.200 It's about $50 billion.

00:46:37.060 I hate to say it, but we're in a situation in Canada where a $400 million corruption is now considered minor.

00:46:45.960 That's how bad things are.

00:46:47.200 Imagine the day under Stephen Harper when a $16 orange juice is reason enough for a cabinet minister to resign.

00:46:54.980 Well, that's our show for the day.

00:46:57.020 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.

00:47:01.940 And keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - January 08, 2026

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is Donald Trump really going to invade Greenland？

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